Over the last 5 years, B2B companies have implemented new inbound lead generation programs to limit their dependency on cold calling. Most marketing departments now spend significant resources on marketing automation tools, building website traffic and getting website visitors to fill in forms for email nurturing programs.

The problem? Inbound marketing doesn’t really work that much better! It only generates enough to do 20% of their sales objectives,

First, schedule a meeting with your best sales reps and marketing team members, and have them answer a few simple questions: Which current clients are the most profitable? What clients were the easiest to close? What specific characteristics do these clients have (market, size, equipment, size of sales team, how many sales offices)? What characteristics do they have in common? How do you find other companies like these?

Essentially, you are defining your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) to expand your target account list. By starting with your best existing customers to establish common attributes, you’ll be able to align your sales and marketing teams around your ideal customers and next best customers.

Once defined, the marketing team will work towards reaching out to this finite list of accounts with laser targeted direct marketing and educational campaigns aimed at the key decision
makers and influencers of the account. This Account Based Retargeting (ABR) approach is more cost effective than traditional cold-calling, but also more effective. By tailoring your message on an account-to-account basis, you can be sure that you are reaching your accounts with messages that are relevant to them and that they will pay attention to.

The timing issue is also solved by ABM. Tracking and alerts are set up to measure interest and help determine when is the right moment for the salespeople to reach out. Each target account is allocated to a salesperson with instructions to contact their target account when they respond to a campaign or when they are on the website. What this lets you do is interact with your target accounts on an individual basis. You can send them the right message at the right time, every time.

Account Based Marketing will establish your company as a trustworthy and legitimate solution in the eyes of your target prospect. When your salespeople call at the right time, they have a much better chance of making a sale.